Social Determinants of Health or Painless Police Report Writing

Social Determinants of Health

Author: Michael Marmot

Social Determinants of Health, 2E gives an authoritative overview of the social and economic factors which are known to be the most powerful determinants of population health in modern societies. Written by acknowledged experts in each field, it provides accessible summaries of the scientific justification for isolating different aspects of social and economic life as the primary determinants of a population's health.
The new edition takes account of the most recent research and also includes additional chapters on ethnicity and health, sexual behaviors, the elderly, housing and neighborhoods.
Recognition of the power of socioeconomic factors as determinants of health came initially from research on health inequalities. This has led to a view of health as not simply about individual behavior or exposure to risk, but how the socially and economically structured way of life of a population shapes its health. Thus exercise and accidents as as much about a society's transport system as about individual decisions; and the nation's diet involves agriculture, food manufacture, retailing, and personal incomes as much as individual choice. But a major new element in the picture we have developed is the importance of the social, or psycho-social, environment to health. For example, health in the workplace for most employees - certainly for office workers - is less a matter of exposure to physical health hazards as of the social envrionment, of how supportive it is, whether people have control over their work, whether their jobs are secure. A similar picture emerges in other areas ranging from the health importance of the emotional envrionment in early childhood to the need for moresocially cohesive communities.
Social Determinants of Health, 2E should be read by those interested in the wellbeing of modern societies. It is a must for public health professionals, for health promotion specialists, and for people working in the many fields of public policy which we now know make such an important contribution to health.

Doody Review Services

Reviewer:Sanija Bajramovic, MD(Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine)
Description:Health is a multidimensional entity. Likewise, there are multiple factors responsible to maintain or disrupt its balance. The editors of this book attempt to deliver research-based information that demonstrates clear relationships between various social conditions and health of community with special reference to European countries. The editors have assembled 12 chapters written by 22 contributors from four countries.
Purpose:The purpose is to offer useful tools for policy makers by summarizing some of the important research findings regarding social factors that are critical for disease prevention and health promotion.
Audience:This book is written for graduate level students and practitioners in public health and public health policy. The contributors are involved in the appropriate field of study. Because of their experience and expertise they can make appropriate recommendations for policy for each kind of social condition they write on to improve community health.
Features:The first chapter begins with an overall introduction to the subject matter. In subsequent chapters contributors address various social conditions including stress, biological condition of the mother, economy, psychological environment, transportation, social support, social cohesion, food, poverty, minorities, and health behaviors (i.e., smoking) and their relationships with the health status of the community. The editors and contributors point out very important issues in public health that have not been discussed in this magnitude before(i.e., smoking rates and the impact of health education). Contributors point out how health education is critical and yet is not effective on its own to reduce the rates of smoking among lower socio-economic groups. Such education needs to be accompanied by policy and environmental changes. Specific policy recommendations are included in most chapter discussions. Some very interesting diagrammatic illustrations have also been included. Overall, a better diagrammatic, graphical, or pictorial presentation could improve the quality of the book. The book ends with an epilogue that points out the WHO's ""Health for All"" initiative and how policy on social conditions may be a key factor in meeting the goals and objectives of this initiative.
Assessment:Although many other community and public health textbooks and articles have mentioned or touched on this subject matter, personally I have not read any book that has focused just on social determinants of health and their power to improve global health. The editors give legitimate reasons and appropriate tools for policy makers so that they can justify their proposals. The subject matter can also stimulate some thought provoking discussions in the classroom as well as debate among policy makers. This is a significant contribution to the field of public health.

Table of Contents:

1	Introduction	1
2	Social organization, stress, and health	6
3	Early life	31
4	The life course, the social gradient, and health	54
5	Health and labour market disadvantage : unemployment, non-employment, and job insecurity	78
6	Health and the psychosocial environment at work	97
7	Transport and health	131
8	Social support and social cohesion	148
9	Food is a political issue	172
10	Poverty, social exclusion, and minorities	196
11	Social patterning of individual health behaviours : the case of cigarette smoking	224
12	The social determination of ethnic/racial inequalities in health	238
13	Social determinants of health in older age	267
14	Neighbourhoods, housing, and health	297
15	Social determinants, sexual behaviour, and sexual health	318
16	Ourselves and others - for better or worse : social vulnerability and inequality	341

New interesting book: Measuring Computer Performance or The Engineering Design of Systems

Painless Police Report Writing: An English Guide for Criminal Justice Professionals

Author: Barbara Fraze

With an emphasis on relevance, this book tailors English instruction to the needs of police training and law enforcement. Taking a building block approach, the first five chapters present English grammar and the last two chapters are devoted to the police report writing process. Each chapter includes practice and review exercises that are taken from the field and assignment material that is geared to law enforcement interests. This edition features sample reports, sample forms and “war stories” that help students see how grammar and writing skills are used in their profession.  

Cause of Death or Coroners Journal

Cause of Death: Forensic Files of a Medical Examiner

Author: Stephen D Cohl

The body of a woman floats to the surface of a lake with sixty pounds of cinder block and chain attached to her legs. Her killer faces the death penalty if the prosecution can answer one question: Did she drown? A worker for the only U.S. plant licensed to produce anthrax dies, the victim of a heart attack. But what caused his heart to stop beating?

Follow veteran medical examiner Dr. Stephen D. Cohle into the world of forensic pathology, as he solves these and many other cases. Written from an insider's view, Cause of Death puts the reader behind Dr. Cohle's shoulder while he examines each victim. The cases range from exotic murder mysteries ripe for a CSI episode to everyday casualties of heart attacks and car accidents. Every victim, though, has a story to tell. Enter a real-life morgue with its strange sights, sounds, and smells, and watch a forensic mastermind as he unravels each victim's cause of death.

Table of Contents:

Introduction: Scenes     7
Decompression     21
Thorns!     27
Contrasts     49
Safe Sex?     56
What Killed Harry Freiburg?     73
The Perfect Murder     77
Bugs!     87
Red Sky in the Morning     101
The Oxford Lake Death Penalty Case     105
The Rough Sex Case     122
Skeletons in the Closet     131
Accidents     153
The Shortest Chapter     154
15 Seconds     169
The Museum of Tattoos     173
Blue Highway     189
Cyanotic     198
Broken Hearts     207
Broken Hearts     216
Of Zebras and Horses     227
David versus Goliath     230
Endings     243
The Hand of God     250
Horseplay     261
Bad Medicine     264
The Last Chapter: Life     283
Message in a Bottle     288
Conclusion: Morgue Poetry and Wintergreen Mints     397
Acknowledgments     313
Notes and Sources     315
Index     327

Books about: Mastering Simulink or PC Modding for Dummies

Coroner's Journal: Forensics and the Art of Stalking Death

Author: Louis Cataldi

During Hurricane Katrina, Dr. Louis Cataldie remained in New Orleans in dangerous and often unbearable conditions to attend to the sick, the injured-and the dead. As chief coroner of Baton Rouge, tending to the dead is Cataldie's job. A little town with big-city problems, Baton Rouge means "Red Stick"-and lives up to its bloody name. Cataldie has faced unusual and disturbing cases, from tracking three serial killers on the loose simultaneously while working the scene of a Malvo/ Muhammad Beltway Sniper shooting, to helping apprehend Baton Rouge serial killer Derrick Todd Lee in a controversial case that was featured in an ABC Primetime Live special with Diane Sawyer and Patricia Cornwell.

Cataldie's maverick ways have made him a favorite target of the media, but he offers no apologies, and speaks for those who cannot speak for themselves. Graphic and frank, this is his unique, up-close look at his life spent stalking death in the Deep South.

Publishers Weekly

Cornwell's foreword may attract readers to this unremarkable account by the chief coroner in Baton Rouge, La. Flat writing and the occasional platitude ("How sad. This is someone's daughter") detract from what could have been an interesting professional memoir by a dedicated public servant whose duties include ordering psychological evaluations and commitments, as well as the more familiar forensic work. Instead, the scenarios, whether an autoerotic hanging or the evaluation of a psychiatric patient, are brief and lacking dramatic tension. Some readers may also be put off by the short prologue added after Hurricane Katrina, which is the "incomplete accounting" the author labels it; the value and heroism of the doctor's work are not adequately captured by his words. His perspective on a number of serial killer cases-and the mistakes made by law enforcement in investigating them-will be new to many and are indicative of the frankness and professionalism that have apparently marked his career. (Mar. 16) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

The Ghosts of Berlin or Health and Mental Health Care Policy

The Ghosts of Berlin: Confronting German History in the Urban Landscape

Author: Brian Ladd

In this compelling work, Brian Ladd examines the ongoing conflicts radiating from the remarkable fusion of architecture, history, and national identity in Berlin. Ladd surveys the urban landscape, excavating its ruins, contemplating its buildings and memorials, and carefully deconstructing the public debates and political controversies emerging from its past.

"Written in a clear and elegant style, The Ghosts of Berlin is not just another colorless architectural history of the German capital. . . . Mr. Ladd's book is a superb guide to this process of urban self-definition, both past and present."—Katharina Thote, Wall Street Journal

"If a book can have the power to change a public debate, then The Ghosts of Berlin is such a book. Among the many new books about Berlin that I have read, Brian Ladd's is certainly the most impressive. . . . Ladd's approach also owes its success to the fact that he is a good storyteller. His history of Berlin's architectural successes and failures reads entertainingly like a detective novel."—Peter Schneider, New Republic

"[Ladd's] well-written and well-illustrated book amounts to a brief history of the city as well as a guide to its landscape."—Anthony Grafton, New York Review of Books 

Look this: Direction d'Hôtel et Opérations

Health and Mental Health Care Policy: A Social Work Perspective

Author: Cynthia Moniz

Overview:

 

This text fills a void in social work literature by offering a comprehensive, in-depth overview of health and mental health care policy.

 

The second edition of Health and Mental Health Care Policy provides a comprehensive overview of health and mental health care policy in the U.S. and presents a biopsychosocial perspective for examining health care, mental health and health care policy. It examines the impact of poverty, inequality, and inadequate access to health care on disadvantaged and at-risk populations and considers implications for policy and practice. In the past four years, the problem of access to health insurance has actually worsened, policymakers have done little to address gaps in coverage and escalating health care costs, and low-income individuals and families, people of color, children, women, and older adults continue to experience significant disparities in health.

 

New to this edition:

• Includes new information about health care reform efforts during the Bush years and concerns about bioterrorism in the wake of 9/11 and the spread of infectious disease.
•  Examines U.S. health care costs in international perspective and the quality of health care in the U.S.
• Provides new information on research and public health efforts to understandand  reduce disparities in health outcomes in infant mortality, cardiovascular disease, HIV/AIDS, cancer, diabetes, and infectious disease.  Each of the sections on African Americans, Latina/os, First Nations, Asian Americans, women, children, and older adults has been thoroughly updated. 

 

    

What reviewers are saying:

 

“The primary strengths of this book include:  it's quite well-written and very readable; it provides a concise overview of health care in this country, as well as comparative international models; it provides important content on health disparities, as well as the implications for social work practice; it provides an overview of the biopsychosocial approach to health care.”

--Mark Holter, University of Michigan

 

“I think the major strength of this book is that it gives an outstanding, comprehensive perspective on the historical antecedents of health care and health care policy in the United States as it relates to the profession of social work.  An additional strength is the inclusion of chapters devoted to disparities in health and access to health care.  Finally, the text has an exceptional conclusion that allows students to to think critically about issues of health care for the future.”

--Makeba Thomas,  Bowie State University

 

 

Allyn & Bacon’s Themes of the Times for Health Care and Mental Health makes a great companion to this text (at no extra charge when valuepacked with this book).  It includes 43 recent articles from the New York Times and allowsfor lively discussion of issues and controversies in the field of Health Care and Mental Health.

 

 

 

[ MyHelpingLab Advertisement ]

Table of Contents:

1	Models of health and health policy	3
2	The failure to enact national health insurance : 1865-1946	17
3	The emergence of employment-based insurance and managed care : 1943 to the present	35
4	Access to care	73
5	The growth and development of managed care	105
6	Medicare and Medicaid	133
7	Disparities in health : people of color	161
8	Disparities in health : gender and age-based differences	193
9	Looking beyond health care	227

Is Democracy Possible Here or Low Voltage Wiring

Is Democracy Possible Here?: Principles for a New Political Debate

Author: Ronald Dworkin

Politics in America are polarized and trivialized, perhaps as never before. In Congress, the media, and academic debate, opponents from right and left, the Red and the Blue, struggle against one another as if politics were contact sports played to the shouts of cheerleaders. The result, Ronald Dworkin writes, is a deeply depressing political culture, as ill equipped for the perennial challenge of achieving social justice as for the emerging threats of terrorism. Can the hope for change be realized? Dworkin, one the world's leading legal and political philosophers, identifies and defends core principles of personal and political morality that all citizens can share. He shows that recognizing such shared principles can make substantial political argument possible and help replace contempt with mutual respect. Only then can the full promise of democracy be realized in America and elsewhere.

Dworkin lays out two core principles that citizens should share: first, that each human life is intrinsically and equally valuable and, second, that each person has an inalienable personal responsibility for identifying and realizing value in his or her own life. He then shows what fidelity to these principles would mean for human rights, the place of religion in public life, economic justice, and the character and value of democracy. Dworkin argues that liberal conclusions flow most naturally from these principles. Properly understood, they collide with the ambitions of religious conservatives, contemporary American tax and social policy, and much of the War on Terror. But his more basic aim is to convince Americans of all political stripes--as well as citizens of other nations with similarcultures--that they can and must defend their own convictions through their own interpretations of these shared values.

Publishers Weekly

Rarely has partisan rhetoric been more divisive or political bickering more infantile than over the last few election cycles. In this short book, Dworkin, a professor of law and philosophy at New York University and Oxford University, argues that liberals and conservatives must realize that each camp is working for the same goal of a better nation. Dworkin (Law's Empire) builds this work on the assertion that most Americans accept certain fundamental principles, the most important of which are the beliefs that "each human life has a special kind of objective value" and "each person has a special responsibility for realizing the success of his own life." From these conventionally conservative maxims, Dworkin constructs an unmistakably liberal legal framework, coming down in favor of due process for terror suspects, same-sex marriage, abortion rights and progressive taxation and social welfare policies. Written in simple and sometimes repetitive language, some of the book's sections are more compelling than others. The too-brief passage on abortion, for instance, is unlikely to make any converts, and the final chapter, on tax-and-spend policies, may strike some as na ve. Though his claim that democracy is imperiled by a dearth of rational public debate is certainly overblown, Dworkin's book deserves careful consideration and response. (Sept.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Eminent philosopher Dworkin (law, New York Univ. & jurisprudence, University Coll. London; Sovereign Virtue) here sets himself the ambitious goal of infusing political discourse in the United States with reasoning such as he himself has employed while engaged in scholarly debate for the past 30 years over the nature of law, of rights, and of liberty and equality. He attempts to address our "degraded politics," which he believes threaten the legitimacy of America's political order, by proposing two principles that can be shared even among those on opposite edges of today's political divides: that each human life has objective value and that each person has responsibility for realizing the potential of his or her own life. From these principles, Dworkin constructs arguments on the treatment of suspected terrorists, the place of religion in public life, and our system of taxation, while contesting a purely majoritarian form of democracy. Dworkin invites those who disagree with his own liberal conclusions to respond with respectful argument and not sloganeering. Based on Princeton's 2005 Scribner Lectures and among the most accessible of Dworkin's many books, this is recommended for public-and essential for academic-libraries.-Robert F. Nardini, Chichester, NH Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

See also: The Family Guide to Reflexology or Sensual Massage

Low Voltage Wiring: Security/Fire Alarm Systems

Author: Terry Kennedy

Best-of-the-best guidelines for handling low voltage wiring

The A-Z reference on designing, installing, maintaining, and troubleshooting modern security and fire alarm systems is now fully up-to-date in a new edition. Prepared by Terry Kennedy and John E. Traister, authors with over three decades of hands-on experience apiece in the construction industry, Low Voltage Wiring: Security/Fire Alarm Systems, Third Edition provides all the appropriate wiring data you need to work on security and fire alarm systems in residential, commercial, and industrial buildings. A CD-ROM packaged with the book conveniently puts at your fingertips sample forms, checklists, a fully-searchable glossary, and hot-linked industry reference URLs. In addition, you get:

*Important safety tips
* Lists of regulations
* Explanations of emerging technologies
*Useful treatments of estimating and bidding
* Much more

JOHN E. TRAISTER (deceased) was involved in the electrical industry for more than 35 years and wrote several best-selling McGraw-Hill books, including the HANDBOOK OF ELECTRICAL DESIGN DETAILS and the NEC HANDBOOK. He was the original author of SECURITY/FIRE ALARM SYSTEMS.

TERRY KENNEDY is an analyst for Liberty Mutual and scrutinizes the causes of defects in major construction lawsuits. He has had a hands-on involvement with the construction industry for over 30 years--carpenter, electrician, general contractor, construction manager, estimator--a thorough knowledge of the industry. Mr. Kennedy is a freelance writer, has been a featured speaker and lecturer, has recently completed the 2nd Edition of the ROOFING HANDBOOK, and is working on the ROOFER'S INSTANT ANSWER BOOKfor McGraw-Hill.

Table of Contents:

	Preface
Pt. 1	The Security Systems Business
Ch. 1	A Business Built on Contracts	3
Ch. 2	Estimating the Installation of Security Systems	27
Ch. 3	Managing a Security Systems Business	49
Ch. 4	Profit Centers: Service, Maintenance, and Ancillary Cash Flow	71
Pt. 2	The Field
Ch. 5	Basic Security System Considerations	93
Ch. 6	Basic Installation Techniques	121
Ch. 7	Residential Security Systems	159
Ch. 8	Commercial and Industrial Security Systems	183
Ch. 9	Troubleshooting and Maintenance of Security Systems	199
Pt. 3	A Deeper Understanding
Ch. 10	Electrical Circuits	233
Ch. 11	The Code	281
Ch. 12	Print Reading	313
	Using the CD	349
	Glossary	351
	Resource Directory	379
	Index	395

Global Capitalism or Depression in New Mothers

Global Capitalism: Its Fall and Rise in the Twentieth Century

Author: Jeffry A Frieden

"Magisterial history...one of the most comprehensive histories of modern capitalism yet written."—New York Times Book Review

In 1900 international trade reached unprecedented levels and the world's economies were more open to one another than ever before. Then as now, many people considered globalization to be inevitable and irreversible. Yet the entire edifice collapsed in a few months in 1914.

Globalization is a choice, not a fact. It is a result of policy decisions and the politics that shape them. Jeffry A. Frieden's insightful history explores the golden age of globalization during the early years of the century, its swift collapse in the crises of 1914-45, the divisions of the Cold War world, and the turn again toward global integration at the end of the century. His history is full of character and event, as entertaining as it is enlightening.

The New York Times - Michael Hirsh

Frieden's 500-plus-page book can be ponderous to read, but it is one of the most comprehensive histories of modern capitalism yet written. He provides a clear, detailed account of the rise and fall of the gold-standard era, especially its peak years from 1896 to 1914, and of the post-World War II Bretton Woods agreements, which gave national economies some control over short-term capital flows…Frieden also argues that for all the strains created by today's global capitalism, it is still the least worst system out there.

Library Journal

In this economic history of the 20th century, Frieden (government, Harvard Univ.) concentrates on the role played by international trade in economic development. He describes the pre-1914 period as one in which free trade reigned supreme, without regard for social disruption, under the umbrella of the gold standard. He shows that various 20th-century attempts at sealing off national economies, from Nazi Germany to Communist China, generally ended disastrously. While Frieden concedes that problems exist with the current trend toward globalization, he argues that it is the best hope for worldwide economic improvement. Considering the century's various experiments with capitalism, socialism, fascism, and their variants, Frieden concludes persuasively that national economies work best when they are open to the world and that open economies work best when national governments address social and other sources of dissatisfaction with globalization. This historical work on international trade is most welcome in the debate over globalization. The length and depth of this book recommends it to academic and larger public libraries.-Lawrence R. Maxted, Gannon Univ., Erie, PA Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Books about: Expert Guide to Oncology or Yoga for Men

Depression in New Mothers: Causes, Consequences, and Treatment Alternatives

Author: Kathleen Kendall Tackett

Are you prepared to provide the best possible treatment for new mothers with depression—including those determined to breastfeed?

This book, which completely updates Kathleen Kendall-Tackett's 1993 classic text Postpartum Depression, provides you with a comprehensive approach to treating postpartum depression in an easy-to-use format, including treatment options that are safe for use with breastfeeding mothers. Addressing fatigue, pain, negative birth experiences, infant characteristics, and psychosocial factors, Depression in New Mothers: Causes, Consequences, and Treatment Alternatives presents a vital, cross-cultural view of depression in new mothers that will prove invaluable in treating the mothers who come to you for help.

Depression in New Mothers: Causes, Consequences, and Treatment Alternatives dispels the myths that hinder effective treatment and presents up-to-date information on:

• the impact of maternal depression on the health of the mother, as well as the health and well-being of the infant
• conditions that may co-occur with postpartum depression, including anxiety disorders (obsessive compulsive disorder), posttraumatic stress disorder, eating disorders, and substance abuse
• alternative treatments, including diet, exercise, and omega-3s
• the role of psychotherapy and community-based programs
• the use of herbs and psychotropic medications to combat postpartum depression
• the impact of various treatments on breastfeeding—with treatment options that are safe for women who continue breastfeeding through treatment

From the Foreword, by Jane Honikman, Founding Director of Postpartum Support International, Santa Barbara, California: Dr. Kathleen Kendall-Tackett has been a pioneer educator in the field of maternal mental health since her first book, Postpartum Depression, was published in 1993. In this new volume she expands upon her knowledge of the complexities and interrelationships that exist in the field of maternal depression. Her goal is to equip her readers with the information needed to make a real difference in the lives of mothers and babies. She has achieved this goal through a systematic framework that will help you understand the topic and how to communicate effectively with postpartum mothers.

Depression in New Mothers is truly comprehensive, addressing under-investigated issues, such as negative birth experience, previously untreated trauma, and the impact of infant characteristics such as crying, sleep habits, prematurity, chronic illness, and disability. Each chapter contains summaries of thought-provoking international research studies. The information in this reader-friendly resource can add a vital perspective to advance the way health professionals today—and the health professionals of tomorrow—view and treat postpartum depression.

What People Are Saying

Linda J. Smith
Linda J. Smith, BSE, FACCE, IBCLC, Director, Bright Future Lactation Resource Centre Ltd., Dayton, Ohio
This stunning compendium of research evidence, clinical descriptions, and real-life stories is A MUST-HAVE RESOURCE for all professionals working in the field of maternal and child health.

Karin Cadwell PhD
Karin Cadwell, PhD, RN, FAAN, IBCLC, Faculty, Healthy Children Project, East Sandwich, Massachusetts; Adjunct Faculty, The Union Institute & University, Cincinnati, Ohio
Without a doubt, this book is A MUST-READ FOR ANYONE WORKING WITH CHILDBEARING WOMEN. The mothers we serve deserve nothing less than knowledgeable, prepared practitioners. The author carefully describes the complex landscape of postpartum depression. Her evidence-based, cogent examination of the life-threads, biologic possibilities, and realities of new motherhood encourage the reader to abandon simplistic or one-dimensional explanations for this common and potentially devastating life event.

For the Presidents Eyes Only or Lincolns America

For the President's Eyes Only: Secret Intelligence and the American Presidency from Washington to Bush

Author: Christopher Andrew

From the co-author of KGB: The Inside Story and an acknowledged authority on the subject comes "the most important book ever written about American intelligence."--David Kahn, author of The Codebreakers and Hitler's Spies

Book about: Communication in Complex Organizations or Imperial Power and Popular Politics

Lincoln's America: 1809-1865

Author: Joseph R Fornieri

To fully understand and appreciate Abraham Lincoln's legacy, it is important to examine the society that influenced the life, character, and leadership of the man who would become the Great Emancipator. Editors Joseph R. Fornieri and Sara Vaughn Gabbard have done just that in Lincoln's America: 1809-1865, a collection of new and original essays by ten eminent historians that place Lincoln within his nineteenth-century cultural context.

Among the topics explored in Lincoln's America are religion, education, middle-class family life, the antislavery movement, politics, and law. Of particular interest are the transition of American intellectual and philosophical thought from the Enlightenment to Romanticism and the influence of this evolution on Lincoln's own ideas.

By examining aspects of Lincoln's life—his personal piety in comparison with the beliefs of his contemporaries, his success in self-schooling when frontier youths had limited opportunities for a formal education, his marriage and home life in Springfield, and his legal career—in light of broader cultural contexts such as the development of democracy, the growth of visual arts, the question of slaves as property, and French visitor Alexis de Tocqueville's observations on America, the contributors delve into the mythical Lincoln of folklore and discover a developing political mind and a changing nation.

As Lincoln's America shows, the sociopolitical culture of nineteenth-century America was instrumental in shaping Lincoln's character and leadership. The essays in this volume paint a vivid picture of a young nation and its sixteenth president, arguably its greatestleader.

The Cultural Politics of Food and Eating or The Shifts in Hizbullahs Ideology

The Cultural Politics of Food and Eating: A Reader

Author: James L Watson

Food is an important and endlessly fascinating lens for social and cultural analysis –not only for anthropologists, but also for scholars of history, literature, cultural studies, political economy, and public policy. The subject is a central idiom for understanding cultural practices and for teaching about culture on many levels. The Cultural Politics of Food and Eating is a collection of readings that uses the study of food as a vehicle for addressing broad themes that are emerging in social anthropology: globalization, capitalism, market economies, and consumption practices.

The Cultural Politics of Food and Eating offers an ethnographically informed perspective on the ways in which people use food to make sense of life in an increasingly interconnected world. It includes studies from eleven countries across five continents on such hot topics as sushi, fast food, gourmet foods, and food scares and contamination.

Table of Contents:

	Introduction	1
1	How sushi went global	13
2	French beans for the masses : a modern historical geography of food in Burkina Faso	21
3	Fresh demand : the consumption of Chilean produce in the United States	42
4	Coca-Cola : a black sweet drink from Trinidad	54
5	China's Big Mac attack	70
6	Of hamburger and social space : consuming McDonald's in Beijing	80
7	Children's food and Islamic dietary restrictions in Xi'an	106
8	The rise of yuppie coffees and the reimagination of class in the United States	122
9	Crafting Grand Cru chocolates in contemporary France	144
10	Globalized childhood? : Kentucky Fried Chicken in Beijing	163
11	Domesticating the french fry : McDonald's and consumerism in Moscow	180
12	"India shopping" : Indian grocery stores and transnational configurations of belonging	197
13	Food and the counterculture : a story of bread and politics	217
14	Industrial tortillas and folkloric Pepsi : the nutritional consequences of hybrid cuisines in Mexico	235
15	Food, hunger, and the state	251
16	The bakers of Bernburg and the logics of communism and capitalism	259
17	The global food fight	276
18	Half-lives and healthy bodies : discourses on "contaminated" food and healing in post-Chernobyl Ukraine	286
19	Mad cow mysteries	299

Books about: Changing Lanes in China or Making Career Decisions That Count

The Shifts in Hizbullah's Ideology: Religious Ideology, Political Ideology, and Political Program

Author: Joseph Elie Alagha

As the recent war in Lebanon demonstrated, an understanding of the Lebanese Shi‘ite militant group Hizbullah remains an important component of any attempt to solve the problems of the Middle East. The Shifts in Hizbullah’s Ideology provides an in-depth analysis of the group’s motivations, tracking the changes it has undergone since Hizbullah’s founding by Lebanese Shi‘ite clergy in 1978. Joseph Alagha demonstrates that Hizbullah, driven at its founding chiefly by religious concerns, in the latter half of the 1980s became a full-fledged social movement, with a structure and ideology aimed at social change. Further changes in the 1990s led to Hizbullah’s becoming a mainstream political party—but without surrendering its militarism or willingness to use violence to advance its ends.
In tracking these changes, The Shifts in Hizbullah’s Ideology covers such disparate topics as Hizbullah’s views of jihad, suicide and martyrdom, integration, pan-Islamism, anti-Zionism, and the relationship with Israel and the United States. It will be necessary reading for both scholars and policymakers.

Blackwater or George Washington

Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army

Author: Jeremy Scahill

Meet Blackwater USA, the powerful private army that the U.S. government has quietly hired to operate in international war zones and on American soil. With its own military base, a fleet of twenty aircraft, and twenty-thousand troops at the ready, Blackwater is the elite Praetorian Guard for the "global war on terror"— yet most people have never heard of it. It was the moment the war turned: On March 31, 2004, four Americans were ambushed and burned near their jeeps by an angry mob in the Sunni stronghold of Falluja. Their charred corpses were hung from a bridge over the Euphrates River. The ensuing slaughter by U.S. troops would fuel the fierce Iraqi resistance that haunts occupation forces to this day. But these men were neither American military nor civilians. They were highly trained private soldiers sent to Iraq by a secretive mercenary company based in the wilderness of North Carolina. Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army is the unauthorized story of the epic rise of one of the most powerful and secretive forces to emerge from the U.S. military-industrial complex, hailed by the Bush administration as a revolution in military affairs, but considered by others as a dire threat to American democracy.

Publishers Weekly

Scahill's liberal horror story is about the company that has deployed many of the "private contractors" who have assisted the U.S. military in Iraq and been responsible for more than its share of death and disorder. Scahill, a regular contributor to the Nation, amps up the scare language in his study of both Blackwater and the wealthy, ultra-conservative Prince family that founded the company, but luckily, Weiner does not. With his booming baritone reined tightly in check, Weiner coolly and calmly delivers the bad news. The parade of scaremongering may grow wearying, but Weiner maintains his composure throughout, offsetting Scahill (to a degree) by virtue of his unyielding temperateness. Simultaneous release with the Nation hardcover (Reviews, Feb. 26). (Nov.)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

New interesting textbook: Detroits Historic Hotels Restaurants or Balls

George Washington: Writings (Library of America)

Author: George Washington

This one-volume collection - the most extensive and authoritative ever published - covers five decades of Washington's astonishingly active life and brings together over 440 letters, orders, addresses, and other writings. Among the early writings included are the journal Washington kept at age 16 while surveying the Shenandoah Valley frontier and his dramatic account of the winter journey he made through the Pennsylvania wilderness in 1753 while on a diplomatic mission. Some two dozen letters written during the French and Indian War, including first-hand accounts of the controversial forest skirmish that began hostilities and of Braddock's bloody defeat, record Washington's early encounters with the harsh challenges of military command. An extensive selection of letters, orders, and addresses from the Revolutionary War record Washington's determined leadership of the Continental Army through years of defeat and deprivation. Letters from the Confederation period (1783-1789) show Washington's pleasure at returning to Mount Vernon, his continued interest in Western land speculation and river navigation, his growing concern with the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation, and his role in the framing and ratification of the Constitution. The writings from his two terms as president show how Washington strove to establish enduring republican institutions, to build public trust in the new government, to avoid the divisions of party and faction, and to maintain American neutrality during the war between Britain and Revolutionary France. Also included in the volume are letters revealing his close and careful management of Mount Vernon and his evolving attitudes toward slavery.

Publishers Weekly

Distilled from his multi-volume writings, this superbly edited selection of Washington's letters, speeches, diary entries, maxims and military orders reveals a writer of surprising versatility and a statesman consciously involved with the forging of our national character. Washington's tumultuous life mirrors the birth traumas of the early Republic, and this collection of his scribblings (nearly all unpublished during his lifetime) add up to an extraordinary autobiographical portrait. Containing missives to Noah Webster, Patrick Henry, Benedict Arnold, Lafayette, Jefferson, Adams, Madison and Hamilton, this volume offers an unvarnished view of Washington as hemp and tobacco farmer, frontier explorer, land grabber, debtor, runaway slave-catcher, indefatigable commander-in-chief, proactive patriot, adept politician and reluctant president dismayed at the growing rift between Federalists and Republicans. Rhodehamel is curator of American historical manuscripts at the Huntington Library in San Marino, Calif.

Publishers Weekly

Distilled from his multi-volume writings, this superbly edited selection of Washington's letters, speeches, diary entries, maxims and military orders reveals a writer of surprising versatility and a statesman consciously involved with the forging of our national character. Washington's tumultuous life mirrors the birth traumas of the early Republic, and this collection of his scribblings (nearly all unpublished during his lifetime) add up to an extraordinary autobiographical portrait. Containing missives to Noah Webster, Patrick Henry, Benedict Arnold, Lafayette, Jefferson, Adams, Madison and Hamilton, this volume offers an unvarnished view of Washington as hemp and tobacco farmer, frontier explorer, land grabber, debtor, runaway slave-catcher, indefatigable commander-in-chief, proactive patriot, adept politician and reluctant president dismayed at the growing rift between Federalists and Republicans. Rhodehamel is curator of American historical manuscripts at the Huntington Library in San Marino, Calif. (Feb.)

Library Journal

The Library of America was red hot this year. In addition to this collection of Washington's most important papers, the publisher also produced volumes of Nathaniel West, Wallace Stevens, John Muir, and a gangbusters, two-volume collection of American crime fiction. (Classic Returns, LJ 4/1/97)

The New Public Personnel Administration or In Defense of Anarchism

The New Public Personnel Administration

Author: Lloyd G Nigro

Prepare for your career in public personnel management with THE NEW PUBLIC PERSONNEL ADMINISTRATION! With coverage of public policies, law rulings, and court rulings, this text gives you a solid foundation for advanced studies in specialized areas of public personnel management. Major policy trends and debates are discussed including affirmative action, compensation and benefits, sexual harassment, workplace violence, substance and alcohol abuse, performance appraisal, and collective bargaining. Discussion questions, suggested readings, chapter appendices, informative illustrations, and examples are just a few of the tools that will help you succeed in this course.

Booknews

An advanced undergraduate or graduate-level introduction to the field of public personnel administration in US governments. This fifth edition is updated with regard to policies dealing with political activity of public employees, sexual harassment, and affirmative action. Special attention has been paid to ongoing reforms of public personnel systems on all levels of government. There is a new chapter on workplace violence. Felix Nigro is affiliated with the University of Georgia. Lloyd Nigro is affiliated with Georgia State University. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Go to: The Future of Business or Competing Devotions

In Defense of Anarchism

Author: Robert Paul Wolff

Once more available in paperback, and with a new Preface, here is Robert Paul Wolff's classic 1970 analysis of the foundations of the authority of the state and the problems of political authority and moral autonomy in a democracy.

Table of Contents:

	Preface to the 1998 Edition
	Preface
1	The Conflict Between Authority and Autonomy
1	The Concept of Authority	3
2	The Concept of Autonomy	12
3	The Conflict Between Authority and Autonomy	18
2	The Solution of Classical Democracy
1	Democracy Is the Only Feasible Solution	21
2	Unanimous Direct Democracy	22
3	Representative Democracy	27
4	Majoritarian Democracy	38
3	Beyond the Legitimate State
1	The Quest for the Legitimate State	69
2	Utopian Glimpses of a World Without States	78

Gorgias or Red Highways

Gorgias

Author: Plato

The Gorgias is a vivid introduction to central problems of moral and political philosophy. In answer to an eloquent attack on morality as conspiration of the weak against the strong, Plato develops his own doctrine, insisting that the benefits of being moral always outweigh any benefits to be won from immorality. He applies his views to such questions as the errors of democracy, the role of the political expert in society, and the justification of punishment.
In the notes to this translation, Professor Irwin discusses the historical and social context of the dialogue, expounds and criticizes the arguments, and tries above all to suggest the questions a modern reader ought to raise about Plato's doctrines.

Books about: Strutture di affari

Red Highways: A Liberals Journey into the Heartland

Author: Rose Aguilar

A San Francisco radio host grown tired of media stereotypes, Rose Aguilar packed up her van, picked up her boyfriend, and set out on a six-month road trip through the red-state West to find out what voters there really care about. Equal parts travelogue, political reportage, and personal discovery, RED HIGHWAYS challenges conventional wisdom and calls for a more thoughtful and productive dialogue between Red and Blue America.

Table of Contents:

Introduction 1 I Welcome to Texas: My First Taste of Fear, Hope, and Hospitality 11 A Day at the Mall Not So Red Self-Described Poor Republicans Camping in Kerrville Blessed Are the Peacemakers Progressive Religion Sex Sells in Dallas Anti-abortion Radio Everyone's Welcome at the Cathedral of Hope Green Republicans Who Supports the Troops?
Houses of Right-Wing Worship The Dallas Divide The Blueberry Festival Diversity in East Texas Pro-War Vegan II Mississippi: A Lesson in Listening 75 Domestic Violence Changed My Politics The Last Abortion Clinic in Mississippi Returning Home to Start a Movement Conflicted Christians Segregated Sundays Exploring the Mississippi Delta Questioning My Pastor Advocating for the Poor Overworked and Underpaid III Oklahoma: The Unplanned Adventure 129 Off the Front Lines and Forgotten Keeping Tabs on the Right Oklahoma City Gun Show Bull Riding, the U.S. Army, and Hooters A Truth-Seeker From Evangelism to Inclusion Adventures along the Oklahoma Panhandle Welcome to Liberal, Kansas!
Burning man Break IV Montana: Independence, Change, and American Indians 179 From Poverty to Politics The Only Republican in the Room Out in Montana Out in the Wilderness Going to the Sun Native America Going Home Afterword 213 Acknowledgments 217 Index 221 About the Author 229

Edmund Burke or Freedom Riders

Edmund Burke: A Genius Reconsidered

Author: Russell Kirk

Russell Kirk was a leading figure in the post-World War II revival of American interest in Edmund Burke. Today, no one who takes seriously the problems of society dares remain indifferent to "the first conservative of our time of troubles." In Russell Kirk's words: "Burke's ideas interest anyone nowadays, including men bitterly dissenting from his conclusions. If conservatives would know what they defend, Burke is their touchstone; and if radicals wish to test the temper of their opposition, they should turn to Burke." Kirk unfolds Burke's philosophy, showing how it revealed itself in concrete historical situations during the eighteenth century and how Burke, through his philosophy, "speaks to our age. "This volume makes vivid the four great struggles in the life of Burke: his efforts to reconcile England with the American colonies; his involvement in cutting down the domestic power of George III; his prosecution of Warren Hastings, the Governor-General of India; and his resistance to Jacobinism, the French Revolution's "armed doctrine."

Children's Literature

With a forward by Roger Scruton, this detailed biography presents the life and time of Edmund Burke in eleven lengthy chapters, including an epilogue about why he is studied. Born in Dublin in 1729, Burke spent most of his career in England as a conservative statesman and philosopher. An index, notes, biographical notes and a timeline are included. 1977, Intercollegiate Studies Institute, $24.95. Ages 16 up. Reviewer: Gisela Jernigan

Table of Contents:

	Foreword
	Prefatory Note
	Selected Events in the Life of Edmund Burke
	How Dead Is Burke?	1
	From Letters to Politics	18
	Conciliation and Prudence	41
	Reforming Party and Government	66
	India and Justice	97
	The Verge of the Abyss	123
	A Revolution of Theoretic Dogma	145
	The Defense of Civilization	169
	Never Succumb to the Enemy	192
	Epilogue: Why Edmund Burke Is Studied	213
	Appendices	230
	Bibliographical Note	248
	Notes	254
	Index	267

See also: Domination and the Arts of Resistance or The God Strategy

Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice

Author: Raymond Arsenault

They were black and white, young and old, men and women. In the spring and summer of 1961, they put their lives on the line, riding buses through the American South to challenge segregation in interstate transport. Their story is one of the most celebrated episodes of the civil rights movement, yet a full-length history has never been written until now. In these pages, acclaimed historian Raymond Arsenault provides a gripping account of six pivotal months that jolted the consciousness of America.
The Freedom Riders were greeted with hostility, fear, and violence. They were jailed and beaten, their buses stoned and firebombed. In Alabama, police stood idly by as racist thugs battered them. When Martin Luther King met the Riders in Montgomery, a raging mob besieged them in a church. Arsenault recreates these moments with heart-stopping immediacy. His tightly braided narrative reaches from the White House--where the Kennedys were just awakening to the moral power of the civil rights struggle--to the cells of Mississippi's infamous Parchman Prison, where Riders tormented their jailers with rousing freedom anthems. Along the way, he offers vivid portraits of dynamic figures such as James Farmer, Diane Nash, John Lewis, and Fred Shuttlesworth, recapturing the drama of an improbable, almost unbelievable saga of heroic sacrifice and unexpected triumph.
The Riders were widely criticized as reckless provocateurs, or "outside agitators." But indelible images of their courage, broadcast to the world by a newly awakened press, galvanized the movement for racial justice across the nation. Freedom Riders is a stunning achievement, a masterpiece of storytelling that will stand alongside thefinest works on the history of civil rights.

The Washington Post - Roger Wilkins

… I entirely agree with a statement made by my former Justice Department colleague the late sociologist James Laue, and quoted by Arsenault: "The national mobilization of conscience which had begun in Montgomery and grown in 1960 reached full bloom with the Freedom Rides." To find out how that happened, one must read Arsenault's superb rendering of that great saga. For those interested in understanding 20th-century America, this is an essential book.

The New York Times - William Grimes

This is a story that only benefits from Mr. Arsenault's deliberately slowed-down narration. Moment by moment, he recreates the sense of crisis, and the terrifying threat of violence that haunted the first Freedom Riders, and their waves of successors, every mile of the way through the Deep South. He skillfully puts into order a bewildering series of events and leads the reader, painstakingly, through the political complexities of the time. Perhaps his greatest achievement is to show, through a wealth of detail, just how contested every inch of terrain was, and how uncertain the outcome, as the Freedom Riders pressed forward, hundreds of them filling Southern jails.

Library Journal

Arsenault (history, Univ. of South Florida; Jacksonville: The Consolidation Story, from Civil Rights to the Jaguars) deftly weaves an intricate narrative of the 1961 Freedom Rides, the civil rights effort by black and white volunteers to enforce the integration of interstate buses and travel facilities throughout the Deep South. Narrating the origins, the violent and turbulent rides themselves, the litigation, and the legacy, this work is similar, in its skillful crafting, to James M. McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom on the Civil War. Arsenault recounts the dynamics of the civil rights organizations that eventually banded together to sustain the Freedom Rides, as well as the individual riders who suffered mob beatings and prison sentences. The interplay of the riders with municipal and state leaders, as well as with the Kennedys and the FBI at the federal level, is skillfully portrayed. The 500 pages are justified when one considers the near inexhaustible courage of the freedom riders and the significance of the national crisis they forced. For a more concise, thesis-driven history of the Freedom Rides, consider David Niven's The Politics of Injustice: The Kennedys, the Freedom Rides, and the Electoral Consequences of a Moral Compromise. Freedom Riders will find avid readership among patrons of academic collections.-Jim Hahn, Harper Coll. Lib., Palatine, IL Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Major Problems in American Foreign Relations or Creating Public Value

Major Problems in American Foreign Relations (Major Problems in American History Series): Volume I: To 1920

Author: Dennis Merrill

Designed to encourage critical thinking about history, the Major Problems in American History Series introduces students to both primary sources and analytical essays on important topics in U.S. History.

Read also Data Mining and Predictive Analysis or Crisp

Creating Public Value: Strategic Management in Government

Author: Mark H Moor

A seminal figure in the field of public management, Mark Moore presents his summation of fifteen years of research, observation, and teaching about what public sector executives should do to improve the performance of public enterprises. Useful for both practicing public executives and those who teach them, this book explicates some of the richest of several hundred cases used at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and illuminates their broader lessons for government managers. Moore addresses four questions that have long bedeviled public administration: What should citizens and their representatives expect and demand from public executives? What sources can public managers consult to learn what is valuable for them to produce? How should public managers cope with inconsistent and fickle political mandates? How can public managers find room to innovate?

Moore's answers respond to the well-understood difficulties of managing public enterprises in modern society by recommending specific, concrete changes in the practices of individual public managers: how they envision what is valuable to produce, how they engage their political overseers, and how they deliver services and fulfill obligations to clients. Following Moore's cases, we witness dilemmas faced by a cross section of public managers—William Ruckelshaus and the Environmental Protection Agency, Jerome Miller and the Department of Youth Services, Miles Mahoney and the Park Plaza Redevelopment Project, David Sencer and the swine flu scare, Lee Brown and the Houston Police Department, Harry Spence and the Boston Housing Authority. Their work, together with Moore's analysis, reveals how public managers canachieve their true goal of producing public value.

Table of Contents:

	Acknowledgments
	Introduction	1
1	Managerial Imagination	13
Pt. I	Envisioning Public Value
2	Defining Public Value	27
3	Organizational Strategy in the Public Sector	57
Pt. II	Building Support and Legitimacy
4	Mobilizing Support, Legitimacy, and Coproduction: The Functions of Political Management	105
5	Advocacy, Negotiation, and Leadership: The Techniques of Political Management	135
Pt. III	Delivering Public Value
6	Reengineering Public Sector Production: The Function of Operational Management	193
7	Implementing Strategy: The Techniques of Operational Management	239
	Conclusion: Acting for a Divided, Uncertain Society	293
	Notes	311
	Index	396

William Wilberforce or American Constitutional Law

William Wilberforce: A Hero for Humanity

Author: Kevin Belmont

Dramatized in the major motion picture Amazing Grace, the story of William Wilberforce is the remarkable account of how one mans vision, courage, and relentless pursuit of justice brought freedom to thousands and changed the course of history.



That the greatest and most successful reformer in all history is almost unknown today is a crying shame. Kevin Belmonte puts this right with his inspiring study of an inspiring life.

Dr. Os Guinness, author of Unspeakable: Facing Up to the Challenge of Evil



An excellently researched and insightfully written biography I applaud its sound scholarship and commend its perceptive insights into a great life.

Brian Sibley, author of C. S. Lewis: Through the Shadowlands



William Wilberforce: A Hero for Humanity is the definitive biography of the English statesman who overcame incredible odds to bring about the end of slavery and slave trade. Called "the wittiest man in England" by philosopher and novelist Madame de Stael, praised by Abraham Lincoln, and renowned for his oratorical genius, Wilberforce worked tirelessly to accomplish his goal.



Whether you are an avid student of history, a pupil of prominent leaders of the past, or simply someone who reads for pleasure, you will love award-winning biographer Kevin Belmontes vivid account of the life of William Wilberforce.

Go to: Le gouvernement et la non Comptabilité :les Concepts et les Pratiques avec CDROM

American Constitutional Law: Introductory Essays and Selected Cases

Author: Adephus T Mason

This classic collection of carefully selected and edited Supreme Court case excerpts and comprehensive background essays explores constitutional law and the role of the Supreme Court in its development and interpretation. Well-grounded in both theory and politics, it displays the role of the U.S. Supreme Court as a legal and political institution and as a major player in American government.

The volume examines and presents supporting cases regarding jurisdiction and organization of the federal courts, the constitution, the supreme court, and judicial review, congress and the president, federalism, the electoral process, the commerce clause, national taxing and spending power, property rights and the development of due process, nationalization of the bill of rights, criminal justice, freedom of expression, protest and symbolic speech, freedom of association, freedom of press, religious liberty, privacy, equal protection of the laws, and security and freedom in wartime.

For those interested in American constitutional law.

 

Booknews

Explains the history and politics behind key cases in constitutional law. After a chapter on jurisdiction and organization of the federal courts, 12 chapters offer extended excerpts from cases and chapter introductions tracing the thread of constitutional doctrine through major decisions. Includes key terms, discussion questions, lists of presidents and Supreme Court justices, and the complete Constitution. Also includes two noteworthy cases from 1997-98. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Urgent Message from Mother or Perfect Hostage

Urgent Message from Mother: Gather the Women, Save the World

Author: Jean Shinoda Bolen

Mother is calling! This polemic, infused with Jungian examination and new age theories, explores the psychological, spiritual and scientific aspects of women as collaborators for change. Now available in paperback edition.

What People Are Saying

Isabel Allende
"This is the most inspiring and optimistic book I've read in years. It tells how women working together can bring us peace and save the planet. Jean Shinoda Bolen invites us all to join the next, most powerful wave of the women's movement. Count me in!"

Desmond Tutu
"Jean Shinoda Bolen's Urgent Message from Mother is a book whose time has come. Our earth home and all forms of life in it are at grave risk. We men have had our turn and made a proper mess of things. We need women to save us. I pray that many will read Bolen's work and be inspired then to act appropriately. Time is running out"

Look this: The Employment Interview Handbook or Materials and Process Selection for Engineering Design Second Edition

Perfect Hostage: A Life of Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma's Prisoner of Conscience

Author: Justin Wintl

"The trouble is that I know too much."—Aung San Suu Kyi

Burma is a country where, as one senior UN official puts it, "just to turn your head can mean imprisonment or death." Aung San Suu Kyi is considered to be Burma's best hope for freedom, and, because of her unwavering commitment to nonviolent resistance to the country's brutal military junta, she has been under house arrest since 1989.

Elected Prime Minister, she was prevented from taking office, but despite failing health, vilification at the hands of the Burmese media, and actual imprisonment in one of the world's most appalling jails, Suu Kyi has persevered in a campaign of nonviolent protest as unflagging as those of Gandhi, King, and Mandela, which earned her the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991.

In Perfect Hostage, the most thorough biography of Suu Kyi to date, Justin Wintle tells both the story of the Burmese people and the story of an ordinary person who became a hero. 43 b/w photographs.

The New York Times - Seth Mydans

This thoroughly researched biography sets out to explicate the personality of a leader who found herself by chance (though also by birth) at the head of her country's struggling pro-democracy movement. By delving into her childhood and her years as a student at Oxford University, Wintle, a journalist and the author of books on Vietnam, finds the seeds of her commanding personality, her straight-backed moral certainty and a "fierce purity" that gave her, as one friend said, "the knack of putting one on one's best behavior"…the book presents readers with the complexity of Myanmar's history and its present tensions, and of Aung San Suu Kyi herself, who is described as both flexible and inflexible, ready to cooperate with her oppressors but unbending in calling for international sanctions against them.

Publishers Weekly

Nobel Peace laureate Suu Kyi seems both the least likely and the most natural person to become "the world's best-known prisoner of conscience," and Wintle's thoroughly engrossing book magnificently illustrates both sides of this elusive yet very public figure. Her education at Oxford and self-effacing demeanor did not prime her for the life of a dissident. Behind her reserve and English veneer, however, was a resolutely stubborn streak and a family life steeped in politics. Wintle's research has been prodigious; he brings encyclopedic knowledge of just about anything that can be linked to Suu Kyi. In rendering his subject, he weaves in Burmese history and folklore, Buddhism, Indian politics and portraits of Suu Kyi's intimates and enemies; that he delivers all this in an absorbing fashion is a marvel. Entertaining and instructive, charming and persuasive, Wintle mingles sober history and gossipy chat. Obscure political in-fighting is made comprehensible; unfamiliar colonial history is made accessible. Still, Wintle (Romancing Vietnam; Furious Interiors) can skewer in a sentence ("About Sanjay [Gandhi] there was something palpably uncouth, while the vainglorious Rajiv [Gandhi] was lacking in intelligence"). Suu Kyi's developing political activism, her house arrests, her honors are delineated in draftsman's detail that Wintle manages to keep vibrant. He is a biographer smitten with his subject, who cares enough to note the smallest detail, such as that Suu Kyi prefers Simenon's Maigret to Christie's Poirot. In making the reader care about the smallest things, Wintle makes the reader really care about the big thing-that "the world's best-known prisoner of conscience" is notfree. (Apr.)

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Harold M. Otness - Library Journal

There have been several publications by and about Myanmar's 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Suu Kyi, whose work for democracy in her country (formerly Burma) has placed her under house arrest in Rangoon for much of the last 20 years. Wintle (New Makers of Modern Culture), a British author who has written extensively on Asia, here compiles an impressively thorough account of Suu Kyi's life, brought up to date with a postscript to cover the Monks' Revolt of November 2007. He sets that uprising and its suppression against the recent tragic history of Myanmar. Unable to meet with his subject, he has drawn upon a wide variety of sources to present a convincingly sympathetic portrait of a woman considered the most courageous of human rights advocates. Wintle explores the network of international relationships and the global economic aspirations of China and India to show why Suu Kyi's struggles are more than just a problem of her backward country and why the West has not been able to resolve the matter. One can hope that Suu Kyi will eventually be able to write and publish her own book. In the meantime, Wintle's book will be sought out in both public and academic libraries.

Table of Contents:

Illustrations     xi
Principal Burmese Personae     xiii
Glossary (including acronyms)     xv
Map     xx
Prologue     xxiii
Land and Father
At the Shwedagon     3
The Shwe Pyidaw     9
After the Mongols     18
The Salami Wars     27
British Burma     41
Saturday's Child     50
From Campus Oddball to National Hero (aged 20)     63
'1300': The Year That Never Was     74
Desperate Times, Desperate Remedies     81
Bo Teza: Reluctant Collaborator     92
Snakes, Ladders and a Wife     104
Old Enemies, New Friends     115
Getting There     124
The Daughter
19th July     141
The Golden Rain is Brown     151
An Indian Idyll: The 'Ugly One' Takes Wing     162
The Daughter of Some or Other Burmese General     172
Things Fall Apart     181
Between Three Continents     196
Thimphu, Kyoto, Simla     209
Sixteen Months
Number One and Number Nine     225
White Bridge, Red Bridge     239
8.8.88     249
Shadow of the HundredFlowers     265
Digging In     277
Squaring Up     287
Suu Kyi's Tightrope     298
Danubyu     308
The Door Slams Shut     317
The Political Madonna
Egg on the Generals' Faces     329
Soldiers at the Gate     341
Famously Alone     354
Freedom on a Leash     370
The Saddest Thing     385
The Widowed Road to Depayin     397
Back to Mandalay     413
Postscript: The Monks' Revolt     430
Acknowledgements     439
Sources/Further Reading/Websites     441
Index     449

Triple Cross or I Write What I like

Triple Cross: How bin Laden's Master Spy Penetrated the CIA, the Green Berets, and the FBI--and Why Patrick Fitzgerald Failed to Stop Him

Author: Peter Lanc

In the years leading to the 9/11 attacks, no single agent of al Qaeda was more successful in compromising the U.S. intelligence community than Ali Mohamed. A former Egyptian army captain, Mohamed succeeded in infiltrating the CIA in Europe, the Green Berets at Fort Bragg, and the FBI in California - even as he helped to orchestrate the al Qaeda campaign of terror that culminated in 9/11. As investigative reporter Peter Lance demonstrates in this gripping narrative, senior U.S. law enforcement officials - including the now-celebrated U.S. attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, who personally interviewed Mohamed long before he was brought to ground - were powerless to stop him. In the annals of espionage, few men have moved between the hunters and the hunted with as much audacity as Ali Mohamed. For almost two decades, the former Egyptian army commando succeeded in living a double life.

Brazenly slipping past watch lists, he moved in and out of the U.S. with impunity, marrying an American woman, becoming a naturalized citizen, and posing as an FBI informant - all while acting as chief of security for Osama bin Laden and Ayman Al-Zawahiri. Known to his fellow terrorists as Ali Amiriki, or "Ali the American," Mohamed gained access to the most sensitive intelligence in the U.S. counterterrorism arsenal while brokering terror summits, planning bombing missions, and training jihadis in bomb building, assassination, the creation of sleeper cells, and other acts of espionage.

Building on the investigation he first chronicled in his previous books, 1000 Years for Revenge and Cover Up, Lance uses Mohamed to trace the untold story of al Qaeda's rise in the 1980s and 1990s. Incredibly, Mohamed, who remains in custodial witness protection today, has never been sentenced for his crimes. He exists under a veil of secrecy - a living witness to how the U.S. intelligence community was outflanked for years by the terror network.

From his first appearance on the FBI's radar in 1989 - training Islamic extremists on Long Island - to his presence in the database of Operation Able Danger eighteen months before 9/11, this devious triple agent was the one terrorist they had to sweep under the rug. Filled with news-making revelations, Triple Cross exposes the incompetence and duplicity of the FBI and Justice Department before 9/11...and raises serious questions about how many more secrets the Feds may still be hiding.

New interesting textbook: Legge, commercio e societ�

I Write What I Like: Selected Writings

Author: Steve Biko

"The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed." Like all of Steve Biko's writings, those words testify to the passion, courage, and keen insight that made him one of the most powerful figures in South Africa's struggle against apartheid. They also reflect his conviction that black people in South Africa could not be liberated until they united to break their chains of servitude, a key tenet of the Black Consciousness movement that he helped found.
I Write What I Like contains a selection of Biko's writings from 1969, when he became the president of the South African Students' Organization, to 1972, when he was prohibited from publishing. The collection also includes a preface by Archbishop Desmond Tutu; an introduction by Malusi and Thoko Mpumlwana, who were both involved with Biko in the Black Consciousness movement; a memoir of Biko by Father Aelred Stubbs, his longtime pastor and friend; and a new foreword by Professor Lewis Gordon.
Biko's writings will inspire and educate anyone concerned with issues of racism, postcolonialism, and black nationalism.

American Foreign Policy or Values in a Time of Upheaval

American Foreign Policy: The Dynamics of Choice in the 21st Century

Author: Bruce W Jentleson

Thoroughly updated to reflect the most recent developments, the Third Edition of American Foreign Policy addresses with unmatched authority the most pressing foreign policy issues of this new global era: how should the United States wield its power, pursue peace, be true to its principles, and work with the international community? American Foreign Policy helps students approach these issues by applying a consistent critical framework throughout the text, emphasizing both the strategic and political aspects of foreign policy decision-making. With new readings and pedagogy in the text and a new website for study and review, the Third Edition is an unparalleled introduction to U.S. foreign policy amidst the challenges of terrorism, postwar Iraq, the Darfur crisis, globalization, democratization, and other timely issues.

Booknews

A primary text for courses on American foreign policy, encompassing both foreign policy strategy and foreign policy politics. Part I provides theory and history for establishing a framework for the dynamics of choice, and Part II applies this framework to the post- Cold War foreign policy agenda and major choices the US now faces. Pedagogical features include boxes on major policy and theoretical debates, and excerpts from speeches and documents. Jentleson is director of the Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy and professor of public policy and political science at Duke University. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Read also Simply Ball or What Your Doctor May Not Tell You about Menopause

Values in a Time of Upheaval

Author: Pope Benedict XVI

In the worldwide best seller Values in a Time of Upheaval, Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) passionately defends the role traditional Judeo-Christian values should play in a pluralistic society and a multicultural world. He examines such crucial contemporary issues as the moral foundations of a free society, the role of spiritual values in promoting human rights, current challenges to Western culture, and the place of faith and love of God in finding true peace. Joseph Ratzinger proposes a balance of faith and reason that avoids the extremes of fundamentalist theocracies and secular, relativist states.

Table of Contents:

1	To change or to preserve? : political visions and political praxis	11
2	What keeps the world together : the prepolitical moral foundations of a free state	31
3	Freedom, law, and the good : moral principles in democratic societies	45
4	What is truth? : the significance of religious and ethical values in a pluralistic society	53
5	If you want peace... : conscience and truth	75
6	Searching for peace : tensions and dangers	101
7	What must we do? : Christians' responsibility for peace	117
8	Acting in the strength that comes from remembrance : the grace of reconciliation	123
9	Europe's identity : its intellectual foundations yesterday, today, and tomorrow	129
10	Common identity and common will : chances and dangers for Europe	151
	Epilogue : belief in the Triune God and peace in the world	161

Symptoms of Withdrawal or Aftermath

Symptoms of Withdrawal: A Memoir of Snapshots and Redemption

Author: Christopher Kennedy Lawford

The firstborn child of famed Rat Pack actor Peter Lawford and Patricia Kennedy, sister to John F. Kennedy, Christopher Kennedy Lawford grew up with presidents, senators, and movie stars as close relatives and personal friends. When he was a toddler, Marilyn Monroe taught him how to dance the twist. He recalls being awakened late at night to hear his uncle Jack announce his candidacy for president. His early life was marked by the traumatic assassinations of two beloved uncles—and during his teen years, he succumbed to the tragic allure of the 1970s drug scene.

Symptoms of Withdrawal is Lawford's unflinchingly honest portrayal of his life as a Kennedy—a journey overflowing with hilarious insider anecdotes, heartbreaking accounts of his addictions to narcotics as well as to celebrity, and, ultimately, the redemption he found by asserting his own independence.

The New York Times - Janet Maslin

Mr. Lawford packs so much material into one book that a Kennedy-parasite biographer could find a career's worth of stories here. But Symptoms of Withdrawal, for all its tales told out of school, has poignant legitimacy. Mr. Lawford may have had to exploit his relatives to get his story published, but he has found a way to step out of their long shadow. His book is sunlit in this way too.

Publishers Weekly

Pity the poor shelver who has to decide where to put this book. Does it go with the wall full of Kennedyana, the tell-alls and critiques of the family America loves to hate and hates to love? Or does it go into the ever increasing "recovery" section of the memoir department, packed as it is with tales of debauchery, and finally, painful and hard-won sobriety? Because this offering, by the 50-year-old nephew of President Kennedy, son of the late actor Peter Lawford, and cousin of the late American prince, JFK Jr. (how's that for a legacy to live with?), is both of those things, it is hard to categorize, and harder to resist. There's plenty of dish here, even if it is dish of the gentle, almost old-fashioned variety. (Lawford tells of being taught to do the twist by Marilyn Monroe; of spying, as a 10-year-old, on a former First Lady taking a bath, of partying with Kennedys and Lennons and Jaggers.) But it is also a palpably painful and moving rendition of bad behavior with women and money and drugs, and 20 years of staying sober. If you've read any recovery lit, you already know the drill: the stories of lying and charming and messing up school, jobs and relationships. There's plenty of that, but in Lawford's case, the backdrop against which he misbehaved is in itself dramatic. He writes achingly of his relationship with his cousin David, RFK's son, with whom he regularly did drugs and who died in a Palm Beach hotel room in 1984. (Lawford broke with Kennedy family tradition and named his son for David.) When he arrives high at a family party, the photographic proof turns up in the newspaper-because it was a fundraiser for his uncle Teddy. If this were somebody with a less famous-for-carousing name, you might think he was just another self-dramatizing alcoholic; as it is, Lawford is clearly just recounting his life. Even so, he could come off as obnoxious-were it not for his frankness, humor and self-awareness. Lawford goes out of his way to own, as they say in recovery, his behavior, and while he acknowledges a family tendency, he blames no one but himself. He can also write knowingly and self-deprecatingly about his competitive relationships with his many cousins, his vanity as an actor (he has appeared in films including The Russia House and Mr. North, as well as many television programs but is, by his own admission, no Tom Cruise), and his tendency to refer to his many female conquests as "the most beautiful girl in the world." So where does this book belong? Does it matter? You don't have to care about Kennedys to find this a moving tale of self-discovery and redemption. Whatever else he may have been-son, nephew, cousin, etc.-Christopher Lawford shows himself here to be a writer of talent and grace. 32 pages of photos. (Oct.) Sara Nelson is the Editor-in-Chief of PW. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Born into wealth and favor as the son of Rat Pack actor Peter Lawford and JFK's sister Patricia, 50-year-old Lawford writes an engaging memoir of privilege, struggle, and recovery. The privilege meant growing up among such Hollywood elite as Frank Sinatra and Marilyn Monroe and on the Washington scene among the Kennedys. All the while, he was trying to find his own identity. But in his dysfunctional family, bonding with dad included receiving a vial of cocaine for his birthday. Lawford writes about his struggle with and recovery from the oblivion of alcohol and drug addiction, an "800-pound gorilla" made heavier by his family legacy. For Lawford and cousin David (RFK's son), being anonymous panhandlers and heroin junkies was sometimes easier than being Kennedys. After David was found dead of an overdose in 1984, Lawford's aunt, Joan Kennedy, brought him to a church basement, where he was disabused of his professed "terminal uniqueness" as he listened to others share strikingly similar tales of addiction. (He has maintained his sobriety for 20 years.) Thoughtful, honest, and at times humorous, Lawford's memoir is recommended for public libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 6/15/05.]-Patti C. McCall, Albany Molecular Research, Inc., NY Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A rare and worthy first-person glimpse into the pitfalls of being a Kennedy, complete with instructions on how to step into the deepest hole available, from the son of Patricia Kennedy and actor Peter Lawford. "I was given wealth, power, and fame when I drew my first breath. Now what?" asks Lawford, admitting that he "failed to take advantage of any of them." The "what" was booze and drugs in quantities that would make even the most hardened liver quail. But you could hardly blame him. Here was a guy whose first stop before being brought home from the hospital was a bar so his parents could grab a drink (they'd already had a few while still in the hospital, of course). Lawford's memoir zeroes in on his shabby, feckless behavior until he was in his 30s, but it can't help revealing all sorts of minutiae of the kind craved by Kennedy-watchers. The story covers his mother's proprietary relationship with her family; the divorce that threw him in among his maternal relatives; life with Uncle Bobby; the daily protocols of Hyannis Port; what it meant to suffer the wrath of Big E (Ethel); how it felt to have family members murdered while the rest of the world described the deaths as assassinations. In a natural, jazzy voice, Lawford describes his years of "better living through chemistry," which beveled the edges of neglect and failed expectations until it became the 800-pound gorilla riding his back, queering his prospects and turning his life to trash amidst the grandeur. It wasn't easy for Lawford to get straight; consequences included alienation, divorce and crying children-the same things his parents had inflicted on him. Classier than the usual tell-all: an honest account of a personalpilgrimage through privileged self-destruction.

Go to: Gold or Killer Mousse

Aftermath: World Trade Center Archive

Author: Joel Meyerowitz

After the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York on September 11th 2001, the world-renowned photographer Joel Meyerowitz felt compelled to visit the site. In his own words, he was 'overcome by a deep impulse to help, to save, to soothe, but, being far away, there was nothing I could do.' On his return Meyerowitz soon made his way to the scene where, upon raising his camera, he was reminded by a police officer that this was a crime scene and that no photographs were allowed. Meyerowitz duly left the scene but within a few blocks the officer's reminder had turned into consciousness. To Meyerowitz, 'no photographs meant no history' and he decided at that moment to find a way in and make an archive for the City of New York.

Within days he had established strong links with many of the firefighters, policemen and construction workers contributing to the clean up. With their assistance he became the only photographer to be granted unimpeded access to Ground Zero. Once there he systematically began to document the wreckage followed by the necessary demolition, excavation and removal of tens of thousands of tonnes of debris that would transform the site from one of total devastation to level ground. Soon after the Museum of the City of New York officially engaged Meyerowitz to create an archive of the destruction and recovery at Ground Zero. The 9/11 Photographic Archive numbers in excess of 5,000 images and will become part of the permanent collections of the Museum of the City of New York.

Meyerowitz takes a meditative stance toward the work and workers at Ground Zero, methodically recording the painful work of rescue, recovery, demolition and excavation. His pictures succinctly convey the magnitude of the destruction and loss and the heroic nature of the response. The images included here are a combination of prints from a large format camera, which allows for the greater detail, and standard 35mm, a format which provided Meyerowitz with the freedom to move easily around the site and capture each moment as it happened.

The remarkable pictures in the archive visually relate the catastrophic destruction of the 9/11 attacks and the physical and human dimensions of the recovery effort. The aim of this book is to provide record of the extraordinary extent of the World Trade Center attacks and to documents the recovery efforts. The book will serve as both a poignant elegy to those who lost their lives and as a celebration of the tireless determination of those left behind to reclaim and rebuild the area known as 'Ground Zero'.

Twenty eight of the images in from the archive were displayed in New York and then in over fifty cities around the world in a travelling exhibition entitled After September 11: Images from Ground Zero.

The New York Times - Jonathan Mahler

Looking through Aftermath, one sees these men and women -- sometimes working alone, sometimes in clusters -- bearing the nation's collective grief as they gradually restore order to chaos. Their grim task notwithstanding, the effect is uplifting. They are not just knocking down the vestigial shells of half-destroyed buildings and clearing away mountains of metal, they are reclaiming this hallowed ground, making it possible once again to imagine a future there.

Library Journal

This large book, measuring 15.8" 11.2" 1.5" inches and weighing 8.45 pounds, chronicles the massive efforts to clean up the debris and human remains surrounding the World Trade Center after the 9/11 attacks. At the time, noted photographer Meyerowitz was out of New York City but immediately attempted to return to his home. However, no one was being granted reentry for five days; to boot, the site had been labeled a "crime scene." Yet with the pulling of some strings, he was permitted access to what became known as Ground Zero and took numerous large-format color photographs of the ravaged landscape over the next nine months. The book begins with a series of breathtaking cityscapes, with the Twin Towers prominent in the skyline. Readers then encounter photographs grouped in four sections: "History in the Making," "Fall," "Winter," and "Spring." A feeling of stunned reverence pervades these images, which collectively constitute an exhaustive archive of the aftermath of the attacks. Among the broad panoramas, Meyerowitz portrays dedicated workers, who offer a feeling of hope, at least in the sense that the worst crimes, even atrocities, often bring out the best in many people. Following the cycle of seasons, the book concludes with a plan for the site and indexes. Meyerowitz contributes a long, poignant essay that opens the book and then threads its way through the layout of the photographs. Beautifully designed and printed, this epic collection serves as a monumental tribute to those who died on 9/11 and those who have thereafter worked to honor their memory. Highly recommended for all libraries.--Raymond Bial, First Light Photography, Urbana, IL Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.